LoGP

is a blend of historical, social, and philosophical commentary related to religious studies and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But nowadays I usually just do book reviews. I also blog at bycommonconsent.com.

September 10, 2009

A new discovery pushes the date of Hugh Nibley's first known published work back by five years much to the surprise of Louis C. Midgley, who has been keeping an eye on Nibley publications for decades. His efforts resulted in the comprehensive Nibley bibliography listing 16-year-old Hugh's 1926 poem "Of Birthdays" in the top spot.1 A clue pointing to Hugh's even earlier premier is found in Boyd Jay Peterson's biography of the admired Mormon scholar:

El and Sloanie [Hugh Nibley's father and mother] allowed Hugh great latitude in [his] educational arrangement. He spent a great deal of time exploring in the woods or riding his bicycle about town. "I would always stop on the Broadway Bridge and look down the river," mused Hugh. "As far as you could see were the masts of ships—three-masters, four masters. The three-masters were the common ones." Hugh was a very capable artist by age ten and enjoyed sketching the ships and making models out of balsa wood.2

As it turns out, Hugh Nibley's earliest known published work was one such sketch, featured alongside the work of other children in a 1921 issue of the Church's Juvenile Instructor that I stumbled on by sheer accident.3 Click the image for a full page view:

[And a big salute to Rebecca Gentry's excellent Uncle Sam/goat
portrait! And extra credit goes to anyone who can decipher the meaning of
the cryptic "Twin Brothers" poem by Thelma Buys.]

6 comments:

Notice the little 10 year old fellow who did baptisms for the dead and then got a "tour" of the temple of some kind as well. My wife pointed it out to me that kids today have to be 12 to perform proxy baptisms.